Astronomers Discover a Mysterious Object in Our Home Galaxy.

Scientists have made an exciting yet baffling discovery, lurking around 40 thousand light years away from the Earth, but still within the confines of Milky way: an object that's heavier than any known neutron star, but too light to be classified as a black hole and spinning around a pulsar.

Alternatively, the object falls into a 'A Black Hole Mass Gap'. Which has bewildered researchers for years. Is it the heaviest neutron star ever observed? Or could this mean that black holes can be lighter than just 2.2 solar masses? 

The first of its kind ever observed "radio pulsar-black-hole binary"— if confirmed, — would force astronomers to rethink what we know about these kinds of celestial objects and even test Einstein's theory of general relativity itself.

Ben Stappers professor at University of Manchester astrophysics author of a new paper published in the journal Science, stated "A pulsar-black hole system will be an important target for testing theories of gravity and a heavy neutron star will provide new insights in nuclear physics at very high densities".

Thanks to the observations from the MeerKAT Radio Telescope in South Africa to assist the discovery. The object in focus is orbiting a "millisecond pulsar," the rapidly rotating, highly magnetized, and extremely dense remnants of an exploded star.

Scientists still baffling about Neutron stars origins when they collapse, by either getting too heavy or smashing into another star. One theory says that they turn into black holes, a gravitational pull so powerful that it can even suck up light.

According to current theories, a neutron star needs to grow approximately 2 times the mass of the Sun to collapse. Astronomers, however, have determined that for them to become black holes, they must be at least around five times the mass of our own star the Sun.

Co-author and Max Planck Institute doctoral student Arunima Dutta said during a statement that "We aren't done with this system yet, Uncovering the true nature of the companion will be a pivot point in our understanding about neutron stars, black holes, and whatever else might be sneaking in the black hole mass gap."